What’s so special about the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook

Addie Broyles, Austin American-Statesman

Wednesday

Apr 24, 2019 at 12:15 PM

The rings are gone, but the plaid is here to stay.

After nearly 90 years as one of America’s most loved cookbooks, the newest edition of Better Homes and Gardens’ “New Cook Book” just got a refresh. The iconic red plaid is still there, and so is the recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but for the first time, the book doesn’t have its signature ring binder.

To publish a new edition is such an overhaul that they’ve done it only 17 times since 1930. “We pull the book apart, every chapter, every recipe,” says Jan Miller, the book’s editor, who is based in Iowa with the rest of the Meredith Corporation.

“Those classics aren’t a gimme. If the chocolate chip cookie recipe is going to survive, what do we need to do to make this feel like the classic of today?”

While they were putting together this edition, they knew every recipe had to have a photo, but they weren’t convinced that readers still needed the binder, which was one of the major innovations when the book first published.

The ring binder allowed cooks to add pages, and to encourage subscriptions, the magazine printed additional cookbook pages that readers could tear out and punch holes in.

As home printers became available, cooks printed out their own recipes to add to the binder. Miller said the company’s research suggested that this generation of cookbook buyers didn’t need to store recipes in the same way their grandparents did, so they designed the book with a red-plaid spine that would still lie flat when opened.

Ultimately, the no-ring decision had to go through Mell Meredith, one of the founders of the Iowa-based publishing company; she gave her blessing. “They know that we have to keep moving ahead, and that’s why Meredith has been successful,” Miller says. “You have to meet your consumer where they are at.”

The “New Cook Book” has a new look, but there are a handful of recipes that have been there since the early years and continue to earn their place, including those classic chocolate chip cookies, orange-glazed “bowknots” and a “busy day cake” that is now called a one bowl butter cake.

The magazine, which launched in 1922 as “Fruit, Garden and Home,” has been in the recipe business for nearly 100 years. By 1924, the publishing company was already hosting recipe contests with a $5 prize, and it built a test kitchen in 1928.

When the book debuted in 1930, the magazine claimed that “never before has there been a cookbook like this,” a promise it quickly lived up to. The book became a bestseller in three months, and by 1938, it had sold a million copies. Today, there are nearly 35 million copies stored on shelves, stashed in boxes and maybe sitting on your kitchen countertop as you read this.

Some editions included blank pages at the back for cooks to write notes and recipes, or an envelope or folder to hold clippings, and countless cooks simply tucked handwritten notes, clipped stories and handout materials within the pages.

In many editions, you’ll find tabs separating the chapters. The tabs made it look like file folders or a mini filing cabinet, Miller says, and in the business of keeping a home, more room for recipes in a single place was the modern equivalent of getting expanded storage on your phone.

This ephemera — and the system in which to store them — is why cooks came to treasure this specific book over others, including “The Joy of Cooking.” Each book became a time capsule, a scrapbook and a pre-Internet encyclopedia for a cook’s entire cooking life.

In the past 20 years, Americans have been finding that balance between fast and from scratch, low calorie and high flavor, hands-on or hands-off. The book begins with a detailed primer about kitchen basics that everyone needs to know, from the different spices to keep in a pantry to how long to cook various kinds of rice, beans, fruits and vegetables.

“There’s so much of an emotional tug tied to this book because so many women, mothers pass it on to their daughters, grandmothers,” Miller says. “When people lose these treasured books through hurricanes or a fire, they ask for their specific edition as a replacement.”

Her staff will send out replacements, and they also accept donations from sentimental owners.

“I have cabinets filled with plaid,” Miller says. “People want to keep them for as long as they can, but if they don’t feel like someone will love and treasure them, they’ll send them to us,” even if the covers are falling off. “I’m happy to be the keeper.”

Last week, I became the keeper of Elizabeth Whitlow’s mother’s 1940 edition, whose tan cover has browned over the years. It’s a well-loved and beautiful book stuffed with a flurry of booklets, newspaper advertisements and other scraps of paper about rationing sugar and cooking with Jell-O.

Whitlow was one of nearly a dozen readers who shared their Better Homes & Gardens stories with me. Her mother, Marjorie N. Whitlow, wasn’t an instinctive or creative cook, and her copy helped her put dinner on the table to the best of her abilities, Whitlow says.

When Whitlow was in seventh grade, she realized that if they were going to eat before 7:30 p.m., she was going to have to make dinner. She’d make weeknight dinners with ground meat, pork chops or fish, along with two kinds of frozen vegetables or a vegetable and a salad.

“No bread, and no deserts, unless boxed pudding or Jell-O or fruit was in season,” she says.

On Saturdays, they’d make hamburgers, and Sundays were reserved for roast beef, fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, “or a meat loaf I still make.”

She has her own 1968 edition of “The New Cook Book,” and as she has started paring down her book collection, she considered passing along her mother’s copy. Whitlow’s mother had been a Statesman reader from 1940 until her death in 1996, so she felt like we could be the trustee of her most trusted cooking resource.

I’m not the only food writer with a particular love of Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks.

Tucker Shaw, editor of America’s Test Kitchen, keeps a copy of the 1962 edition on his desk at work for inspiration. “I love the kind of real-life point of view in it, like how to remove stains,” he says. “It offers a cool window into the kinds of things that home cooks were thinking about at the time and are still thinking about.”

The holistic experience of running a home kitchen is an important part of running a good kitchen, he says, and the book addresses all of that, from planning and shopping to storage and cleanup.

Shaw also pointed out that this particular edition has a sense of humor. “Not (author) Peg Bracken-level humor, but a certain levity that is welcoming,” he says, including a photo of a woman holding dishes with five arms extending from her body.

I keep a copy on my desk, too. When readers donate cookbooks to our ongoing cookbook drive, sometimes I’ll get a copy of “The New Cook Book,” and a recent donation included a copy of the book with math homework, dated 1977, from a then seventh-grader named Timothy Sunstrom.

Cookbook author Kate McDermott also has a first edition of the cookbook in her collection, which she turns to for inspiration when she’s developing new recipes or wanting to connect with the generations of cooks who came before her.

Austinite Jane Hellinger made a donation to the cookbook drive a few years ago but couldn’t part with her 1960s-era Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. She also still has her mother’s light blue edition, which she got for her wedding in 1939. Both copies have been “a steadfast presence in our lives” and are well used.

Judy Warren uses her copy of the cookbook to make peanut butter cookies and ginger crinkles to share with her friends at a senior apartment complex. “I have several other cookbooks even though I had to downsize my collection when I moved,” she says. “The Better Homes and Gardens is still my favorite and the one most often used.”

My aunt, Betsy Cook, emailed photos from her 1976 edition that her sister, Patti, gave her when she married my uncle, Chris, in 1981.

“It was my only cookbook at the time, and while I have never been much for following recipes to the letter, it has been an amazing reference over the years when I was in need of inspiration, reassurance or step-by-step hand-holding,” she says.

Patti had written on the first page of each chapter. At the beginning of the section on vegetables, she wrote, “Betsy, I love you and I can’t think of a thing to say about veggies.”

“What a delight to flip through the pages and find sisterly encouragement and her special brand of humor,” she says. “It brings a smile to my face as I read them again, 37 years later.”

Kay Pinckney Braziel has a five-ring copy of “The New Cook Book” that she thinks is probably a gift from her wedding 56 years ago. Her husband, John, a gardener at Sunshine Community Garden, is the primary cook in the family, and for more than 20 years, has cooked them breakfast in the mornings, but “I still refer to it for deviled eggs, peach pies, gravy and the weights and measures section on the inside back cover,” she says. “I am very happy that I still have it as a basic cookbook, even though I have other cookbooks that I have probably used more over the years. I would never part with it.”

Orange Bowknots

“This is one of the longest-running recipes,” cookbook editor Jan Miller says. “It’s been in the book since 1946.” You’ll need three oranges total (one is for the glaze) for these citrus-y tarts.

2 oranges

5 1/2 to 6 cups all‑purpose flour

1 package active dry yeast

1 1/4 cups milk

1/2 cup butter or shortening

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2 eggs

To make the orange icing:

1 1/2 teaspoon orange zest

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 to 3 tablespoons orange juice

Remove 2 tablespoons zest and squeeze 1/4 cup juice from oranges. In a large bowl stir together 2 cups of the flour and the yeast. In a 2-quart. saucepan heat and stir milk, butter, granulated sugar and salt just until warm (120 to 130 degrees) and butter almost melts. Add milk mixture and eggs to flour mixture. Beat with a mixer on low 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high 3 minutes. Stir in orange zest and juice and as much of the remaining flour as you can.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately soft dough that is smooth and elastic, using a dough scraper as needed (dough will be slightly sticky). Shape dough into a ball. Place in a lightly greased bowl, turning to grease surface of dough. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in size (1 hour).

Meanwhile, lightly grease two large baking sheets. Roll each dough half into a 12-inch-by-7‑inch rectangle. Cut each rectangle crosswise into twelve 7‑inch strips. Tie each strip in a loose knot. Start by folding each strip into a loose loop. Tuck one end under the loop and ease it up through the hole of the loop. Readjust dough to make an even knot. Place 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Cover and let rise in a warm place until nearly double in size, about 30 minutes.

While rolls are cooling, in a medium bowl stir together orange zest and powdered sugar. Stir in enough of the orange juice to reach drizzling consistency. Drizzle the rolls with orange icing and serve. Makes 24 rolls.

“Although renamed several times through the years, the one-bowl butter cake recipe formula in the 17th edition is similar to the favorite butter cake recipe in the very first edition of the cookbook published in 1930. It was described as a ‘good plain cake batter.’ Over the years we changed the fat from shortening to butter, and opted out of the cake flour to all purpose to accommodate today’s home cook, and added a bit more milk,” Miller says. The quick mix‑and‑pour method and common pantry ingredients create a moist, tender everyday cake. Customize it with ice cream, curd, fudge, honey, caramel, jam, toasted nuts, grilled fruit, such as pineapples, or berries.

Every edition of “The New Cook Book” has had a recipe for pickles, and the editions that were published during the Depression and World War II had even more preserves than the editions that followed. The newest edition calls for using Kirby, Persian and gherkin varieties and says that the best pickling cucumbers will be at your local farmers market in early to midsummer. Choose those that are firm and bright-colored with no soft spots. If pickling cucumbers aren’t available, use regular-size cucumbers from the garden. Do not use waxed cucumbers that are sold in the supermarket.